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Mick Womersley, a professor of human ecology at Unity College in Maine, has offered a provocative and powerful reaction to my post on new work pointing to the abundance of oil now that new methods have been developed to extract it from deposits that were previously too costly to tap.

I’ve been attracted to Womersley’s work and ideas before (see “Home Energy Economics 101“). Womersley, along maintaining with blogs on sustainable living and his small farm, sends his students out into rural Maine communities to conduct energy audits and help cut energy bills for struggling families and retirees.

Here’s his piece, which he titled “A Matter of Self-Control”: Read more…

The report is written by Leonardo Maugeri, a top oil company executive from Italy who is currently a research fellow at the Geopolitics of Energy Project of Harvard’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs. Here’s a video interview with Maugeri posted by the Belfer Center:

Maugeri offers a field by field analysis of investments in oil production that provides detailed support for the emerging picture of an oil boom conveyed in recent reports in The Times, including Jad Mouawad’s article “Fuel to Burn: Now What?” Similar themes echo in Daniel Yergin’s recent book “The Quest.”

After a detailed exploration of the reasons for the current increase in oil production capacity, with much more coming after 2020, Maugeri warns that the oil industry will need to work hard to limit environmental risks from greatly expanded drilling for oil (and natural gas) in shale deposits, a vast resource that has been made tappable by hydraulic fracturing, known also as fracking. The report doesn’t address the implications for climate policy and energy efficiency that would attend a prolonged era of abundant oil. I’m sure others, here and elsewhere, will dive in on that issue.

Here’s an excerpt in which Maugeri explains why he sees a decent chance that the United States will become second only to Saudi Arabia in oil production by 2020 (abundant deposits of shale oil are only one): Read more…

You probably already read about California being added to the list of states facing the economic opportunities and environmental issues that come with abundant shale oil or gas (oil in California’s case, because of the Monterey Shale). And if you’ve been reading here for awhile, you’re aware of the reality, for better and worse, of “oil’s long goodbye” and “the gas age.”

But there’s now more vital reading for anyone interested in understanding the reasons for the U.S.-centric surge in oil and gas extraction from such shale layers, which exist in many places around the world. In an Op-Ed article, Christof Rühl, the group chief economist of BP, explains how this revolution — with its attendant benefits and risks — is not simply about geology or technology. Here’s a core excerpt: Read more…

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By 2050 or so, the human population is expected to pass nine billion. Those billions will be seeking food, water and other resources on a planet where humans are already shaping climate and the web of life. Dot Earth was created by Andrew Revkin in October 2007 -- in part with support from a John Simon Guggenheim Fellowship -- to explore ways to balance human needs and the planet's limits.